Loom, an iOS and web app for storing media in the cloud, today added support for mobile video playback.

And, according to the company, it’s the fastest private streaming video application on the App Store. “At least we’re not aware of any other streaming app that is faster than us,” said CEO and cofounder Jan Senderek.

When Loom processes uploaded photos and videos, it automatically transcodes multiple versions of the media — one in the original resolution and multiple smaller versions. So when you stream videos on an iPhone or an iPad, it starts playing back in a low-resolution then bumps it up to increasingly higher resolutions.

“We’ve essentially built a private Netflix for everybody,” said Senderek.

That type of video streaming might sound commonplace — YouTube and Netflix have been doing it for years — but it’s rare for a cloud storage provider. Loom loads photos more snappily using that same methodology, too.

Because Loom doesn’t require a constant Internet connection — mobile files sync when a connection is reestablished — the company views the service as a replacement for the iPhone’s default photo album. It aims to be a simpler alternative than iCloud or Dropbox and more private than other photo storage services like Flickr or Facebook.

“Most users will not store their most private photos next to a sharing community — they’re just one step too close to being shared,” said Senderek. “Flickr and Facebook run ads next to your photos. That just makes people uncomfortable.”

Loom offers its users 5 GB of free storage and enables them to earn another 5 GB though a referral program. Senderek declined to provide specific user figures but noted that more than 40 percent use it on a daily basis and around 4 percent shell out some cash for additional space (paid storage starts at 50 GB at $3.99 a month). The service processes around a million pieces of uploaded content on a good day, he added.

The next steps for the Loom are improved search, sharing, and curation features. The company plans to bring the app to Android devices and Windows Phones eventually, though iOS remains the focus for now.

A Y Combinator grad, Loom raised $1.4 million from Google Ventures and other investors in early October. It currently has eight full-time employees.

Tapjoy is making it easier for game and app publishers to monetize their products with video ads and other rich media.

The company is formally launching its Tapjoy Rich Media and Tapjoy Video Plus platforms today that make it possible to more easily create and insert video ads into apps and games. User acquisition and monetization remain two of the largest challenges for app developers, and Tapjoy has been a significant force in using incentive-based advertising to address both.

At the core of Tapjoy’s offerings are rewards known as offers. If a player wants to earn virtual currency in a game, they can opt to watch a video ad. They can choose among different video ads for the one that they prefer. And then Tapjoy includes a secondary action that the player can take on their own initiative, driving deeper engagement.

For instance, a player may watch a video ad for a game because they’re incentivized to earn a reward, such as virtual currency. Then, after they watch the ad, they may tap on a button to download that game in the video ad or share the video with a friend. That secondary act is non-incentivized, so the player only takes that action if they really want to do so.

The latest version of Tapjoy’s software development kit includes the ability to insert such features into a single ad unit. Tapjoy Rich Media lets advertisers create campaigns that drive consumers from awareness and consideration to conversion and referral. Tapjoy Video Plus lets advertisers add the secondary, post-view conversion actions.

Both of these products are now available across Tapjoy’s ad network that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers each month. Peter Dille, chief marketing officer at Tapjoy, said in an interview with VentureBeat that the products let advertisers create customizable and immersive ads that communicate a brand’s story in multipart ads.

“Publishers can take advantage of improved monetization through these new features,” Dille said. “Advertisers can really tailor a brand message and take them further down a marketing funnel to take actions like visiting a web site or watching a video.”

Nokia is taking advantage of both Tapjoy’s rich media and video capabilities to advertise its Lumia 925 smartphone. Dille said these ads will be more valuable because consumers opt into them. The consumers choose to interact with the rich media ads that they want to see, such as mini-games, 360-degree views of products, puzzles, swipeable product catalogs, and other creative mobile advertisements.

The advertiser can drive the user to find a nearby store, request a quote, follow a brand’s social channel and other types of direct engagements. Dille said this creates a stronger experience with a brand.

Tapjoy is also partnering with Cambridge, Mass.-based Celtra, a rich media mobile ad creator and analytics firm, to create rich media campaigns for its customers. All of the ads are compliant with the Internet Advertising Board’s mobile rich-media ad interface definitions 2.0 (MRAID). Tapjoy partners with Comscore to target groups of users with the right ads. Celtra has a variety of templates that advertisers can use to customize their ads.

Tapjoy can reach more than 435 million users in a month with what it calls its Mobile Value Exchange model or reward-based offers.

“We are excited to work with Tapjoy on further improving monetization solutions for App developers and value for advertisers.” said Mihael Mikek, Celtra co-founder and CEO. “The combination of Celtra’s industry-leading interactive ad technology and Tapjoy’s value exchange model creates a powerful ad platform that will drive true engagement with mobile ads, enabling advertisers to achieve their core goals of getting consumers to interact with, and learn about, their brands and products.”

More information:

More information:

]]>0Tapjoy improves monetization of mobile apps with actionable video adsFerris crowdsources mobile video to create an evolving story of the world around youhttp://venturebeat.com/2013/07/30/ferris-crowdsources-mobile-video-to-create-living-story-of-world-around-you/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/30/ferris-crowdsources-mobile-video-to-create-living-story-of-world-around-you/#commentsTue, 30 Jul 2013 17:59:10 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=786671Ferris automatically connects user-generated video clips based on user, location, date and time, hashtag, and category to create a single stream of any given experience.
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Ferris launched a mobile video application today so you never have to miss out on memorable moments.

The Austin, Texas, startup automatically connects user-generated video clips based on user, location, date and time, hashtag, and category to create a single stream of any given experience. Rather than perusing individual videos, each video becomes part of a wider narrative that evolves over time as more content is added.

“There are so many moments in life that you don’t really know about, and we want to be the glue that brings them all together,” said cofounder and CEO Paul Boukadakis in an interview with VentureBeat. “We are taking a fundamentally different approach to mobile video with the idea that the collective is more powerful than the singular experience. We facilitate a level of collaboration that is missing from any other player on the market.”

Boukadakis said Ferris stands out because it is building “living” video stories that are “greater than the individual.” The inspiration for Ferris came after a birthday party. Boukadakis wanted to film the entire event, but so many people were spread out over multiple rooms, and the party was so long, that he just couldn’t do so by himself. However, several people took videos on their phones, and those videos captured a wider range of more intimate details. This sparked the idea for Ferris — a service that could automatically knit all these videos together into a cohesive whole.

Each video stream is thoroughly indexed and interactive so you can speed up, slow down, skip ahead, etc. Ferris includes an “Explore” feature, where users can find videos by zooming in on a map, selecting a date, browsing through a theme, or typing in a hashtag, like a music festival.

“You could be in the front row at a concert and not know that you have a friend 100 rows back or what is happening backstage. Every object, person, and place has a story, and the power behind Ferris is the capability to build those stories automatically but to also go back in time at any point and see whats happening and what is continuing to happen.”

Boukadakis and cofounders Chris Shaheen, J.B. Hager, and Brian Daugherty have been developing the product for two year. They wanted to make the process of capturing and sharing video as easy as possible before launching while also building technology that could connect all the videos in a meaningful way with minimal editing and users input.

]]>0Ferris crowdsources mobile video to create an evolving story of the world around youAdobe launches ‘Primetime’ TV Everywhere service, points out we’re watching a ton more videohttp://venturebeat.com/2013/04/10/adobe-launches-primetime-tv-everywhere-service-points-out-were-watching-a-ton-more-video/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/10/adobe-launches-primetime-tv-everywhere-service-points-out-were-watching-a-ton-more-video/#commentsWed, 10 Apr 2013 15:05:07 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=713581Is this the TV Everywhere solution we've been waiting for?
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We’ve been hearing about the notion of “TV Everywhere” — having paid television content available on multiple screens and devices — for years now, but it’s typically been difficult for broadcasters to offer something that complex. With the official launch of PrimeTime, Adobe’s solution for delivering TV Everywhere services, that could finally change.

Adobe announced today at the NAB conference that it’s officially making Primetime available to more providers. Formerly known as “Project Primetime,” the service mostly notably powered the apps and online video coverage for the London 2012 Olympics. Adobe also announced today that Comcast is using Primetime for its Xfinity apps, and NBC is using it for a variety of sports broadcasts.

Primetime is a combination of Adobe’s video player, advertising, DRM, and analytics technologies, making it easy for content owners to deliver video while also monetizing it. Some companies have managed to develop their own TV Everywhere solutions, but Primetime will remove much of the headache (and cost) of the TV Everywhere process for others.

In its U.S. Digital Video Benchmark Report for 2012, also released today, Adobe points out that TV Everywhere consumption grew a whopping 12x compared to 2011. Mostly, that’s due to more content being made available, especially when it comes to sports, according to Tamara Gaffney, Adobe’s senior marketing manager for its Digital Video Index.

Not surprisingly, social media was a big part of digital video’s growth in 2012. Adobe found that socially-referred videos are more likely to be completed, compared to videos consumers simply stumble on. Social engagement with videos also grew to 70 percent from 42 percent. (Check out more social stats below.)

“We started off thinking about video, but very quickly we realized you couldn’t think about video without social, and you can’t think about video and social without mobile … it’s a trifecta,” Gaffney said in an interview with VentureBeat

Minglei Xu, a San Francisco developer who sold his last company to Zynga, is back on the horse!

The dev just filed a Form D with the SEC, disclosing a $1 million seed funding round for his new startup, AirXP (no URL yet, folks). Its product is still in closed alpha, so all we know is that it involves live video, it’s social, and it’s consumer-grade — so we’re guessing smartphone video.

Also listed on the Form D are Ying Xie, another SF-area tech person of interest, and Rick Thompson of Signia Venture Partners. Thompson actually invested in Xu’s former startup, Wild Needle, and has particular expertise in mobile/social gaming.

Zynga bought Wild Needle in May 2012, giving Xu a scant year to recover from the founder experience before jumping back into the fray. The company was two years old at the time and cost Zynga around $3.8 million; it had raised a total of raised $2.5 million in funding from Thompson and Shasta Ventures.

With its recent 2.8 upgrade, the movie app replacement for Apple’s camera app uses “cinematic video stabilization” to create movies that are so smooth and clean, it’s a thing of beauty. In fact, the image above is a still from a movie shot on an iPhone with Luma … on a bike.

If I seem to be gushing, that’s because I am. I take some video occasionally when doing interviews for VentureBeat, and have received some criticism for the sadly palsied nature of the results.

I’ve tried the app myself, and the results are simply stunning. I had no idea handheld video from a phone could look so good. Here’s footage from the company showing the difference between the native iPhone camera app and Luma:

“By using advanced motion retargeting algorithms Luma not only removes handshake, but also ensures that you get the smoothest possible shot,” the company posted on its blog. “The motion retargeting algorithm automatically figures out the ideal camera motion (whether it’s a stationary, panning, dolly, or steadicam shot that you’re after) and retargets the video to match that motion.”

Luma also allows you to apply filters for various effects to your videos in a very Instagramish way, if you’re into that sort of thing. Pastel, vignette, analog, noir, toon, and the ever-favorite sepia are among the options, and the effect is applied immediately, not in post-processing. As per usual, you can inflict the results of your creativity on Facebook and Twitter, or to connections on Luma’s own budding video network.

One caveat: I did not see a share to YouTube option, which is a must-have for me. Fortunately, there is an option to save captured videos to your standard iOS camera app, from which you can simply upload to YouTube.

Overall, however, this is one of the few apps I’ll be keeping on my phone after testing. The company calls it magic. I simply have to agree.

Streamweaver’s focus on split-screen recording sets it apart from the many other mobile video recording apps on the market, most of which focus on creating a Twitter or Instagram for video (Viddy, Klip, Tout, etc.). Streamweaver’s only real competition in the split-screened video market is iOS app Vyclone.

“A lot of the innovation that’s happening in social video is focused on post-record, but we’ve always been intrigued by the social aspects and allowing people to create content together,” Streamweaver COO Jay Hake told VentureBeat, adding that the new capital will allow the team to continue doing just that.

Hake said Streamweaver will use the new funding for additional development and marketing. The startup is currently focused on producing a more feature-rich version of its iPhone app but does consider an Android version something that will eventually happen.

The new round includes a major investment by former Facebook Chief Security Officer Chris Kelly, who will join Streamweaver’s board of directors. Others that participated in the funding round include Byron Smith and INCITE Co-investment Fund, as well as previous investors Tennessee Community Ventures and Mountain Group Capital.

Founded in 2012, the Nashville, Tenn.-based startup currently has 8 full-time employees and is planning to release a new version of its iPhone app in the near future.

Color me crazy, but serial entrepreneur and quixotic Silicon Valley character Bill Nguyen could be on to something big. A partnership announced today between his flagging startup Color and prominent wireless carrier Verizon is, at the very least, no small feat.

Color is the seemingly cursed, $41 million-backed Palo Alto company that makes an iPhone and Android app for broadcasting 30-second live clips to friends on Facebook. The app is yoked to Facebook’s Open Graph, but Color is reaping none of the member and engagement benefits counterparts Viddy and Socialcam are getting from the relationship. In fact, with roughly one million users, Color looks like a dud.

But counting out Nguyen would be a million dollar mistake. Nguyen was previously the founder of Lala, the before-its-time cloud music-streaming service that sold to Apple for around $80 million, and Onebox, which was acquired for $850 million in 1999 by Phone.com.

Today’s multi-year Verizon deal is the start of a comeback story arc for Color, as Nguyen sees it. Verizon, which touts the largest 4G LTE network in the U.S. and has 93 million retail customers, is breaking out the crayons, betting big on the application by making it a native part of all the mobile devices it sells.

Starting Monday, Verizon customers will get access to a special version of the application that allows higher quality video recording and live streaming over the carrier’s 4G network, and adds audio into the mix for the first time.

The partnership means that the Color app can rely on a Verizon device’s hardware and the carrier’s network for encoding a higher quality video at double the frame rate. For the user, that translates to live videos that are closer to being as rich in color as they are in real life. For Nguyen, it means he’s one step closer to building the live video app of the future.

The quality is now high enough that a Color video is good enough to rival a status update or a tweet in terms of content, Nguyen said. “You used to have to sacrifice quality to have a shared moment … but you don’t have to make compromises any more. You don’t have to sacrifice video quality for a live experience.”

Nguyen is a quirky idea man with just the right mix of genius and eccentricity needed to believe that he can see the future. In his corner of the world, the future is live, high-quality, unedited video experienced in the moment, and enjoyed in a variety of formats after the fact.

“Once you have HD, you don’t go back,” Nguyen said, likening the new Color app and its future iterations to high-definition television sets. Eventually, Color will win over people with an experience so great that they’ll say, “I can’t believe I’ve lived without this,” Nguyen added.

Vision and pedigree aside, you would be right to be skeptical, to second guess Nguyen, Color, and the notion of live video as the future in mobile. Color version one, the iPhone-only, photo proximity version of the app, flopped so forcefully you could nearly feel the impact of the crash. Round two has fared a little better. Members share, on average, four to eight videos per month, Nguyen said — that’s not the home run his investors are still anxiously awaiting.

“Investors … would want to see more success from us at this point. That’s understandable. They put a lot of capital in; they want to see momentum,” Nguyen admitted. “But I don’t think I’ll ever try to do something just to get adoption — versus trying to do something that I think is cool and hard.”

And what about all that cash, you ask? Fair question. Color raised $41 million in funding prior to its launch, a sizable sum of money that put a giant target on the startup’s back. Now, even after releasing one poorly received app, spending months working to perfect one unproven app, hiring aggressively (Color has a 50-person staff that will soon double in size), and living large in an expansive Palo Alto office, Color has plenty of time to find its identify and an audience. The startup has five to six years of runway left, Nguyen told me.

Let’s not forget the competition. Viddy and Socialcam, two apps for uploading recorded video clips, are performing remarkably well after hooking into Facebook’s Open Graph. Nguyen had colorful words to describe their recent successes and why his app is better.

“A lot of those guys gave up 20 percent of their companies for celebrity endorsements,” he said. “I’m never going to pay someone to use a product … we’ll beat [their] numbers, but we’re going to do it with technology they can’t touch.”

Those are fighting words. Here are some more: “I get to the big numbers,” Nguyen said with unabashed confidence, “but they usually happen over night.”

Investors, naysayers, and yours truly will all be watching for that night.

]]>0Can you hear me now? Color goes live with multi-year Verizon dealIs Skype about to release video-calling for mobile devices?http://venturebeat.com/2010/12/24/skype-video-mobile-devices/
http://venturebeat.com/2010/12/24/skype-video-mobile-devices/#commentsFri, 24 Dec 2010 20:30:56 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=234620Skype, a provider of voice and video calling services over the Internet, might be poised to release video calling for mobile devices equipped with a front-facing camera and running Skype at the Consumer Electronics Show next year, according to a number of reports. The service already has video conferencing built into its PC and Mac […]
]]>Skype, a provider of voice and video calling services over the Internet, might be poised to release video calling for mobile devices equipped with a front-facing camera and running Skype at the Consumer Electronics Show next year, according to a number of reports.

The service already has video conferencing built into its PC and Mac applications. The application uses webcams and can connect to other Skype users. But video calling isn’t available on Skype’s mobile app. Mobile users instead have to use applications like Tango and Apple’s Facetime for video calling. That’s largely because mobile video calling wasn’t that big of a deal a few years ago when front-facing cameras weren’t standard.

But most mobile phones have front-facing cameras for video calling today. The next generation of tablets will include them as well. The Samsung Galaxy S and Research in Motion’s upcoming BlackBerry Playbook tablet feature front-facing cameras, and the new iPad probably will as well. The software to execute video calling today is rather fragmented, and right now it seems like little more than a novelty application. Having a single application that works across multiple devices would do wonders to take video calling on mobile devices mainstream.

That is, if Skype can keep its network up and running. Skype recently suffered a widespread and lengthy outage with its Internet calling service that affected tens of millions of people. The company said in a post that problems with the Skype network’s “supernodes” are responsible and could take hours more to fix. Skype apologized to users, particularly some businesses that began to rely on Skype for their calling needs. Based on that reaction, it’s clear that Skype has widespread placement in the voice-over-Internet market.

If Skype decides to release video calling for all of its existing applications, it could significantly stretch its market share. But, as usual, this is the Internet — so take all these rumors with a grain of salt.

]]>4Is Skype about to release video-calling for mobile devices?YouTube-powered Vevo sees mobile app hit 1 million downloadshttp://venturebeat.com/2010/08/26/vevo-youtube-1-million-downloads/
http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/26/vevo-youtube-1-million-downloads/#commentsThu, 26 Aug 2010 23:33:39 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=209039The mobile-app version of Vevo, a music and entertainment streaming site powered by Google’s YouTube, hit 1 million downloads on Thursday— little more than a week after it launched. Vevo said that there are apps on the way for the iPad and Android mobile platforms, but hasn’t given a definitive release date. The app is […]
]]>The mobile-app version of Vevo, a music and entertainment streaming site powered by Google’s YouTube, hit 1 million downloads on Thursday— little more than a week after it launched.

Vevo said that there are apps on the way for the iPad and Android mobile platforms, but hasn’t given a definitive release date.

Vevo is the music industry’s version of online-TV service Hulu. It offers streaming music videos and songs, backed by record labels and supported by advertising. The mobile app offers its entire catalogue of 20,000 music videos, according to the website.

Since its launch in 2009, the site has hit about 45 million unique viewers per month. The company is a joint venture between Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group Abu Dhabi Media Company. It has a revenue-sharing deal with Google, which sells advertising on the site, hosts its videos and also features Vevo videos on its YouTube video site.

]]>0YouTube-powered Vevo sees mobile app hit 1 million downloadsBroadcast journalists turn to Bambuser’s live-streaming mobile video appshttp://venturebeat.com/2010/03/31/bambuser/
http://venturebeat.com/2010/03/31/bambuser/#commentsWed, 31 Mar 2010 14:30:47 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=172658Forget the TV crew. Broadcast journalists may turn to their Android devices and iPhones to file reports on the spot. Swedish mobile video startup Bambuser just signed a deal with Dutch mobile news agency ProSkope to let journalists stream live footage directly into their main control room. The deal is the latest in a string […]
]]>Forget the TV crew. Broadcast journalists may turn to their Android devices and iPhones to file reports on the spot.

Swedish mobile video startup Bambuser just signed a deal with Dutch mobile news agency ProSkope to let journalists stream live footage directly into their main control room. The deal is the latest in a string of partnerships the Swedish company has signed that are gradually outlining the future of mobile live video. Bambuser’s technology is already used by emergency responders to securely record accident and crime scenes and ask for advice from headquarters. They also signed a partnership with Finnish broadcaster YLE last year as an experiment; YLE’s journalists also used Bambuser’s technology to file news reports. (A video is embedded below.)

There are around a half-dozen companies trying to close in on the live mobile video space, including Ustream, Qik and Knocking.

Bambuser is the fun, if slightly eccentric, entrant from Sweden. The founder, Mans Adler, studied entrepreneurship with a Danish group called the Kaos Pilots, and went on to live in Silicon Valley and soak up ideas before returning to Sweden, where he created a “Big Brother”-style online show.

In the show, a group of people lived in a house and continuously recorded their lives with mobile phones for 48 hours. It became a viral phenomenon. And out of the publicity came the company, Bambuser, which is Swedish slang for a lousy sailor who can only handle the easiest tasks. Eventually, they started releasing live-streaming apps, once Apple signaled that it would finally allow them last fall.

By the time Steve Jobs started allowing the first live video apps into the store, Bambuser actually had one ready to go. One of their developers had already built it because he wanted a way for his girlfriend to remotely advise him on what to wear every morning. Their app works on multiple models of iPhones from the video-enabled 3GS to older versions because it uses a hack that takes around two dozen screenshots a second when the phone’s viewfinder is turned on. The company also offers Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android versions of the app.

The killer use cases for mobile live video have yet to be fully realized. We’ve experimented with it through Ustream with varying degrees of success. My VentureBeat colleague Anthony Ha took Ustream’s mobile video pack with him to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year and used it to interview companies in the convention center. While we did attract several hundred viewers, sometimes there were gaps in coverage as he walked around to find interesting people to interview. We realized that to make it work, there’s a lot of preparation involved, and you need to have interviewees lined up and ready to go. It’s definitely a learning process on both sides, for publishers and for technology companies.

Also, as speed improves with faster 4G networks, we might finally start to see the real pay-off.